ATLANTIC CITY — Stockton University said Thursday it has formally returned ownership of the Carnegie Center to the city.
“Our understanding is that the Carnegie Center will be used to provide academic and other support services for at-risk teenagers and young adults in Atlantic City,” Stockton President Harvey Kesselman said in a news release. “We applaud those efforts and look forward to those students becoming future Ospreys here at Stockton.”
Built in 1904 as the Carnegie Library on what is now Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, it served as the city’s library until 1985, when the current Free Public Library was built.
According to Stockton, the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority acquired the building in the 1990s, after it had been abandoned, and spent several million dollars restoring it and gave it to Stockton in 2009.
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But CRDA put restrictions on Stockton’s use of the building, limiting it to business-related academics and a few other uses, and required the university to return it to the city if such use stopped.
When the new Stockton Atlantic City campus opened in fall 2018, the university began moving programs from the Carnegie Center to the new Academic Center.
In 2019, Stockton and the Atlantic City school board began negotiating the possible trade of buildings. Stockton offered the school district the renovated Carnegie Center in exchange for the district’s boathouse on Arctic Avenue near the Albany Avenue bridge.
But the swap never happened.
The building was closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Stockton, which decided not to open it again. Instead, since it would no longer need the building for its approved uses, Stockton gave it back to the city, the university said.
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